The present invention relates to an article posting apparatus such as a personal computer (hereinafter to be referred to as PC) for referring to articles posted, for example, on a network like a Internet and for posting an article therein. The invention relates to an apparatus for managing information indicating the relationship between the posted articles, an article posting system comprising a plurality of article posting apparatuses for referring to the posted articles and for posting articles and an apparatus for managing information indicating the relationship between the posted articles, and a recording medium which is readable by the article posting apparatus.
There has been commonly used a communication system to exchange opinions with many people by referring to or posting articles through PCs connected to networks such as the Internet, PC communication, etc. In such a communication system, when the number of the participants increases so that the number of articles increases, the relationship between the articles become ambiguous such that to which article the opinion of the posted article is directed. Accordingly, it is inconvenient in that the user is required to read the contents by decompressing the article when referring to articles.
In order to relieve such inconveniences, in the conventional communication system by PC communication there is provided a service to show the relationship of the posted articles such that the posted article is the opinion to which article, in a hierarchical tree structure according to the posting order.
However, according to the service as above provided by the system side, though the relationship between the articles is clarified, the intention of the posting user is not expressed as to whether the posting user intends to take a leading part in discussion by expressing the opinion positively to some other user's article, or the user just desires to give opinion as an observer with a slight distance from the center of discussion, or the user states the opinion related with the topics though not directed to the specific article. Accordingly, in order to know the posting user's intention, it is necessary to decompress the article once and read the contents thereof.